The Serving Soldier

...Babson thinks, only so far as it gets back to beginnings...

...But, as a recognized authority, one of the highest in America, upon statistical and economic subjects, and as a loyal Congregationalist, he has a double right to our attention when he upon so vital a matter as the apostolate of laymen to laymen in this age of jarring beliefs and misdirected energy, The parrot cry, so familiar in the columns of our 490 THE COMMONWEAL September 30, 1925 liberal journals that "the churches have failed," was no part of Mr...

...To find so representative a body, therefore, on the very morrow of The Commonweal's appeal for greater cooperation among the Catholic laity, addressed upon a similar need in its own communion, cannot help but be instructive, and, rightly regarded, should prove helpful...

...Babson's discourse...

...In any church where belief in a consecrated priesthood and hierarchy does not obtain, the function of a spiritual head will always be vague and ill-defined, peculiarly subject to accidents of personality, character, and forensic ability...

...Secondly, he sees the church as one more victim of the dualism of modern life...

...The contributions which they have made during the years they have existed as a body are invariably of the highest value to any good cause that has been lucky enough to enlist their attention...

...The Unitarian Laymen's League is admittedly a group of citizens of the very highest standing...

...Proceeding from the ranks of the old Congregational Church in the early days of the last century, the body to which its members belong was reinforced from the very start, in pulpit and pew, by men of the highest purpose and intellect, for whom the murky air of Calvinist belief was no longer respirable...

...all the greater the need for some moral authority that will, regularly and frequently, interpret infractions of them as moral lapses...

...And if the sinner, conscious of moral lesions or in low spiritual health, keeps away from the churches, may not the motive of his abstention be, not so much "mauvaise honte," as Mr...

...Roger Ward Babson, who made Churchmanship and Laymen the text of his own lay sermon at the fifth annual convention of the league, is not himself a Unitarian...

...If the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount are and always have been difficult to reconcile with "getting on" (Mr...

...First, Mr...

...Babson dates the "unfortunate situation" from the days of Constantine—surely far enough back...

...If theology is unpopular with the congregations of Protestant churches today, it can only be because the men who can make it interesting are not at hand, and if they are not at hand, it is at least a reasonable assumption that enthusiasm has waned under successive attenuations—in a word that, in trying to popularize their message, its spokesmen find themselves with very little left that any layman of good will could not impart as well as they...

...Babson is puzzled, and suggests certain reasons for the paradox which are interesting to follow...

...Babson, "know that banking, industry and commerce are only able to exist today because of the teachings of the church . . . We know that the basic arts and sciences were founded in monasteries and that religion furnished the inspiration which built the cathedrals, carved the statuary, and painted the pictures which we visit Europe today to see...

...by sinners for sinners...

...And yet it is impossible to read his appeal to laymen without, at the same time, feeling that he has laid down pretty clearly the limits of what laymen can accomplish...

...Babson, "the church has unconsciously become a haven for saints rather than a hospital for sinners . . . The church was founded by poor people for poor people...

...Thirdly, and perhaps most important of all for Catholics who read Mr...

...We laymen," says Mr...

...men not averse to "ancient rites," but finding in them solace and inspiration amid a crassly material world, men not intellectually uplifted, but who, before any manifestation of the Divine will, can echo from their hearts the words of the centurion which reach us across vanished ages and wrecked empires—"I also am a man subject to authority...

...by the weak for the weak...

...It is unfortunate, but inevitable, that any Catholic comment upon Mr...

...Indeed, it would hardly be too much to say that the sincerity of a conviction might be measured in terms of the gratefulness with which any contribution tending to familiarize it in the minds of men, from whatever, quarter proceeding, is welcomed...

...We know that America is what she is today because our first building was the church and our first text-book was the Bible...

...THE SERVING SOLDIER THOSE who hold honestly and sincerely to any ideal are not only not dismayed, but greatly encouraged, when they discover that the same purpose is the goal of other men, far outside their organization, trained in habits of thought which are not theirs, and committed to solutions which they are forced to discard...

...This layman, he thinks, has a general idea that the "great fundamentals" are "tolerance, faith, prayer and " influence," and will keep away from the churches until the preacher "delivers the goods...

...Babson's words, "more intellectual than the average run of people," and who are, quite frankly, waiting for the "masses" to catch up to the level of their message, is just one of the delusions that accounts for so much of the moral confusion of our times...

...It will regain its former influence, Mr...

...Rather, in the entire fabric of such civilization and security as we enjo7, he sees an ideal at work which it has been their business to keep before men's eyes, and which, upon the whole they have followed faithfully...

...It is only because Catholics, as a body, have so definite a view of the spiritual functions which inhere in its priesthood by virtue of their sacred call and ordination, that The Commonweal was able last week, without any fear of being misunderstood, to voice what it believes is a pretty general call for more active cooperation by the laity, not so much in fields which they have entered with any conscious purpose of an apostolate, as in fields where they find themselves placed by reason of their calling and station, and the stewardship for which, it feels, may not longer be evaded...

...Babson believes that the layman is not only "not interested" in theology, but disgusted when it is made the basis of strife, as at Dayton recently...

...Babson thinks, but rather a consciousness that the remedies to which he will be directed are only such as he could apply himself, without any intervention by healing and consecrated hands ? No one, probably, would be more surprised than Mr...

...We believe it is safest in the hands of men who share the submission in essentials of faith and morals with humbler and less enlightened brethren, men not tired of theology, but grateful for fresh aspects of the faith to which they subscribe...

...It was in their ranks that such effective and elect souls as Emerson, William Ellery Channing, the Adamses, Webster, and Theodore Parker found a spiritual home, and the mer fact that its ground principle was and has never ceased to be toleration, and that it embalms in the amber of its benign beliefs so much of New England transcendental culture, should be sufficient to earn the respect of all patriotic Americans for Unitarianism...

...We know that if any one individual should today attempt to apply Jesus's teachings in everyday life, he would be nearly wiped out of existence unless there were some monastery to which he could flee.1'' >Nevertheless, the layman demands that "the church should honestly recognize its present inconsistency...

...Babson to find his appeal, made to Unitarians, for lay cooperation in the churches of America regarded as an implicit plea for more dogma—still less as a plea for a sacramentalism from which Unitarianism registers the farthest rebound...

...Babson's three great issues should find itself sharply at odds not only with his conclusions, but with his premises...

...In the famous "five speaks points" these men laid down a doctrine of human perfectibility, unfettered by dogma, and provided a via media between supernaturalism and sheer materialistic determinism that was of inestimable value to America's mental upbuilding...

...But that such a mission of service to their fellows is best accomplished by men, in Mr...

...It is when he turns from this frank admission on the part of men whom he meets in the course of his busy life to their apathy and coldness towards the various bodies through which, presumably, the benefits they reap have come to them, that Mr...